Three years after Private Pleasures, devoted to the Lusty Lady Series (1991-93) - a collection of portraits of customers photographed from inside a peep-show booth, made by Cammie Toloui while she was working as a stripper in San Francisco - the photographer returns to Shmorévaz with Mary's, Gerry's & Hot Flashes. Invited on a residency at the legendary Mary's Club in Portland in 2025, Toloui re-enters the strip-club space more than thirty years later, attentive to how the dynamics of seduction, transaction, and consent have evolved. Preserving the anonymity of the people depicted, she this time uses a thermal camera "to reveal the inner heat of our interactions, [...] and the invisible transfer of desire that money carries. It's a powerful symbol of patriarchy, and its twin sibling, capitalism," Toloui writes.
Echoing the gesture at the heart of the Lusty Lady series, Toloui once again turns the camera on herself, aiming the thermal lens at her own body to capture the hot flashes brought on by menopause. These hot flashes metaphorically echo a thread that has run through her practice from its earliest days. The exhibition sets these new images alongside Gerry, a 1990s series in which the photographer witnesses a session between a man and a model he met through a classified ad. Bringing these different bodies of work together, Mary's, Gerry's & Hot Flashes presents Toloui's practice as a long-running inquiry, a negotiation with the charge of desire, power, and reversal that our gazes carry.
Shmorévaz is an independent art space located in a former shoe shop in Paris. Emotion, archives, and erotic and political imaginaries lie at the heart of its program, expressed through editorial and artistic projects drawn mainly from feminist, queer, and DIY cultures. Alongside its exhibitions, the space also hosts readings and research residencies. In September 2024, Shmorévaz launched its publishing arm: Shmooks (Shmorévaz books).